Martin McPhilimey - School of Breath Science

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Martin McPhilimey - School of Breath Science

🧠 Helping coaches build clinical-grade breath, sleep & nervous system skills.

I’m Martin McPhilimey, a respiratory and sleep scientist, educator, coach, and founder of the School of Breath Science. My work sits at the intersection of breathing science, sleep, nervous system regulation, stress resilience, and human performance. With over 15 years of experience across respiratory and sleep science, clinical practice, education, and applied coaching, I help individuals and pro

fessionals better understand how the body works — and how to use that understanding to improve health, wellbeing, and performance. Through my consulting and educational work, I support people in building stress resilience, improving sleep, regulating the nervous system, and developing practical tools to feel calmer, clearer, and more capable in everyday life. Through the School of Breath Science, I train coaches, breathwork facilitators, health professionals, and practitioners to apply breathwork and breath training safely, intelligently, and effectively using evidence-informed frameworks. My mission is to raise the standard of breathwork education by bringing together science, practical coaching, and a deep respect for the human experience. Whether you are here to improve your own health, deepen your understanding of breath and the nervous system, or become a more confident practitioner, you are very welcome here.

27/08/2026

This is the biggest mistake functional breathing teachers make. Even the so called experts.

Faster, shallow upper chest breathing does not mean over breathing.

They will talk about this being inefficient breathing and high is correct but that also means per breath less gas is exchanged because the less air gets to the alveoli where gas exchange occurs .

Harder , larger and more forceful exhales will lower co2 but others breathing mechanics - observing the physical way we breath doesn’t give us much information

Follow Martin McPhilimey | Breath & Sleep Scientist | MSc, MRes for more breathing tips

27/08/2026

I absolutely love breath science.

But for about a year now, I’ve felt like I’ve slowly boxed myself into a space where every piece of content has to be rigorously backed by science, and where the algorithm only seems to reward me when I talk about breathing.

Quite frankly, there’s more to me than the scientist.

So I sat down, turned on the camera and started speaking freely about how I’ve been feeling.

No slides. No papers to reference. No pressure to make every sentence fit neatly inside the breath science box.

I want to get back to thinking freely, sharing openly and creating from the full range of who I am, including the journey, the lessons, the mistakes, the business, the training, the ideas and the life behind the work.

So here’s to creating a space where I can still think deeply, but don’t have to worry about proving every thought before I’m allowed to share it.

That space is Beyond Breath.

It’s now integrated into The Breath Science Podcast, with episodes alternating between Breath Science and Beyond Breath.

One week we’ll go deep into the science of breathing.

The next, we’ll go beyond it.

If that sounds like your kind of conversation, come along for the ride.

Comment ‘Podcast’ below and I’ll share that with you.

Martin

27/08/2026

The 12-week Breath Resilience Instructors Training with School of Breath Science | Practitioner Training starts this October, and our early bird offer closes at the end of the month.

Comment BRIT below and I’ll send you the details.

Answer a few quick questions, take a look through the training page and, if it feels like the right fit, enrol.

You’ll get immediate access to the training, so you can start learning straight away before our live sessions begin on 1 October.

26/08/2026

Use this principle to understand whether your breathing at result is serving your nervous system or aiding in keeping it stressed.

N.G.S.E 👃

26/08/2026

You’d think endurance athletes would naturally have a better relationship with their breathing than sedentary people.

But that’s not always the case.

Some fascinating work from Olivia Harrison and colleagues has compared endurance athletes with sedentary individuals, including how they respond to respiratory sensations and changes in CO₂.

The findings raise some interesting questions about respiratory interoception, chemosensitivity and whether repeated exposure to intense breathing actually changes the way we perceive and interpret those sensations.

I’ve explored some of this research in my latest essay on respiratory interoception and anxiety.

Comment “INTERO” below and I’ll send you the full article.

25/08/2026

Respiratory interoception and anxiety aren’t discussed enough in the breathwork space, yet there’s some fascinating research helping us understand the relationship people have with their breathing.

It’s not always just about what the breath is doing physiologically. It’s also about how the brain senses, interprets and predicts breathing sensations.

I’ve put together an article exploring some of my favourite research in this area and what it might tell us about breathlessness, anxiety, CO₂, respiratory sensations and the way we experience our breath.

Some of the findings might surprise you.

Comment “INTERO” below and I’ll send you the full article.

24/08/2026

A fascinating new immune study shows the power of attention and body awareness on the inflammatory response..

What are your thoughts?

24/08/2026

Over the years, there’s a question I keep getting asked.

“I’m going through menopause and struggling with sleep. What can I do?”

And to be honest with you, it’s not something I knew deeply. So I decided to run a workshop on it for the journal club inside our School of Breath Science community.

But this information is too important to sit behind a paywall.

So I’ve made it free. It lives inside our free community — join and it’s yours, along with everyone else in there learning this properly.

For you, your friends, your family. Any woman who needs this education.

Comment MENOPAUSE and I’ll send you the link to join and access it.

23/08/2026

A new study on people with hyperventilation syndrome suggests something quite different from what is often taught in functional breathing pop science.

The reality is that the evidence behind some of the strongest claims in this space is surprisingly limited.

That is one of the differences between science and marketing.

Science builds understanding slowly. It deals in uncertainty, competing explanations and accumulating evidence.

Pop science tends to turn that uncertainty into something concrete, simple and marketable.

This paper is a good example. Hyperventilation syndrome appears to involve multiple layers of breathing physiology, perception and behaviour. Reducing it to “poor CO₂ tolerance” may be attractive because it gives people a simple problem and, conveniently, a method to sell as the solution.

The nuance isn’t as sexy. It probably won’t scale as quickly either.

But learning the nuance changes how you think, assess and work with people.

That is how we raise the standard of this industry.

If you want to work at that level, I’m with you.

19/08/2026

How many times have you had someone say, “But it’s just breathing”?

In less than 50 seconds, I’ve given you plenty of reasons why it’s anything but.

Now imagine what someone could understand if they gave you 30–60 minutes to explain it properly.

Breathing is simple. The science behind it isn’t.

Share this with your community and help people understand that there’s a lot more to breathing than “just breathing.”

Address

Yokine, WA

Website

http://schoolofbreathscience.com/, http://www.martinmcphilimey.com/

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